For the uninitiated it may come as a slight surprise that the term ‘prime’ in relation to the property market in London can be subdivided into three distinct groups.

There is ‘Prime Fringe’; ‘Prime London’; and ‘Prime Central London’, the latter being the premier residential areas at the heart of the capital.

Prime Central London (PCL) has been affected less than other areas of London during lockdown, according to new data obtained by Chestertons from LonRes .

The figures show that so far this year, the number of transactions in PCL are only 11.6% lower than the same period last year, while transactions in ‘Prime London’ and ‘Prime Fringe’ have fallen nearly double that, 22.8% and 21.6% respectively.

The LonRes figures also show that Chestertons, which remained as active as it could throughout the lockdown whilst following all government guidelines, was responsible for 13.6% of all sales across the prime areas of London – more than any other single agent.

Guy Gittins, Managing Director of Chestertons, commented:

“Without doubt, lockdown took the air out of the market almost overnight, but it became immediately apparent that there were still plenty of buyers and sellers – especially in Prime Central London – that were keen to continue with their purchase or sale as long as it was possible to do so while keeping within the guidelines.

“Thankfully we had the technology and expertise to continue running our business remotely and within days had managed to get video tours of over half of all the properties we were marketing for sale and rent.

“Our software systems also allowed us to quickly analyse and pivot as market conditions changed in real time.

“The teams at Chestertons worked tirelessly through the most difficult of circumstances and, although we always felt like we had done the most we possibly could during lockdown, the data from Lonres is a pleasant validation of those endeavours and something that everyone at Chestertons is rightfully proud of.”

Cory Askew, Regional Director for Central London added:

“The second quarter of 2020 will forever be remembered as ‘The Covid Quarter’, yet in spite of this, the huge amounts of residual activity and deals generated in Q1 allowed us to make the most of an incredibly difficult set of circumstances.

“As the Covid crisis peaked and troughed around the world, our London teams were amongst the first to identify those nationalities that had clearly been through the storm and had come through with their confidence – and appetite for Central London Property – largely intact.

“Starting in Asia and most recently across Europe and domestically, the easing of lockdown across the globe correlated with a reinvigorated demand from those countries.”

Gittins concludes:

“We have now transitioned back into ‘business as usual’ and many of the activity metrics we monitor are rapidly approaching, or in some instances, overtaken pre-Covid levels.

“Should the wider economy emerge from the crisis in a similarly stable manner as the property and stock markets over the coming months, ‘The Covid Quarter’ might be rapidly forgotten.”